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“This is Ice.” Kale says softly, almost reverently, his fingers tracing over my hand, making patterns, drawing bulls-eyes around the calluses. His hands are softer than they should be, and I don’t understand that. Don’t understand why his are softer than mine. Why he’s softer than I am. We’ve been through the same shit, but he’s still gentle, still beautiful.
“Huh?” Jacob asks, more focused on his joint than us. He draws the questioning sound out, plays with it, his eyes dazedly focused on Kale. I wonder if he’s seeing what I’m seeing and doubt it. Jacob’s world is his alone, and the rest of us stand outside it confused. We don’t get him, but he doesn’t get us either. Doesn’t get Ice.
But I do. I always do. I understand Kale’s language even though I don’t speak it. For him, every word has a thousand meanings, every nuance is important. I think he would have been a poet, if he wasn’t born here in Evret. If he had born in a place that had room for poets. Not in Evret, where there isn’t even room for us.
Ice… a moment that becomes frozen in memory. Where every emotion, every breath is recorded, to be played back again and again. Melting away in time, but still returning when the climate is right, when the same emotions are felt again. Ice can be flawed. As this moment is flawed. Hiding out in an abandoned building while the rain pours outside, hyped up on adrenaline and listening to each other’s heartbeats. Not ideal, but still perfect.
Kale is half curled in my lap, fuchsia hair wet from the rain, tangled by earlier play. Eyes the color of lilacs staring up into mine and I am struck again by how irrationally beautiful he is. It’s so obvious that he doesn’t belong here, like a flower growing in the middle of a nuclear blast site. Impossible that something so fragile could survive. And of course he doesn’t belong with me.
I know exactly what I look like next to him, a hard creature with the unforgiving green eyes of a killer, never smiling or expressing any emotion beyond all consuming anger. I know what I am. I am the soul of Evret, ruthless and deadly. Except now, as I sit here, my fingers intertwined with Kale’s, smiling, just barely. It’s always like this in stories isn’t it? The minstrel tames the angry wolf, and now docile, it walks willingly to the slaughter. This emotion, felt while he rests against me, will be my death someday.
Jacob is another story. Cuddled next to me, his head on my shoulder, my free arm wrapped around him, he stares at Kale as well, and I don’t know what he sees. His eyes lift to meet mine, and he smiles, cuddling closer. Jacob’s eyes are coffee colored, forever holding the wounded confusion of a whipped puppy. He is our runaway, our lost boy, trapped forever in his own private never-never land. Drugs to take the world away, drugs to make it better.
It’s obvious to me that Jacob has never admitted the truth that even Kale has faced. Evret, a place of hunger and razor edged survival has never sunk in for him. Somehow he still expects it to treat him kindly. For this reason, he is breaking as we watch. Every time someone hurts him I see it, the shattered confused look in his eyes. He is being broken into smaller and smaller pieces, and when there are no pieces left large enough to break they will grind him into dust. At that point, I think he’ll be lost forever. I will no longer be able to sit like this, holding him against me. No longer enjoy the taste of his languid kisses.
“Don’t worry about it Jacob.” I tell him, knowing that I can’t explain. He’ll never understand that a moment like this could be forever, could be perfect. Not when it’s barely real to him now. He smiles lazily, and I tighten my hold on him, pretending that I can somehow keep him here. By force, if I have to. I know better than to think it, but I pretend not to.
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‘Ice’ the thought comes to me unbidden and with it a flash of memory. The color of Kale’s hair, the warmth of Jacob as he rested against me. The memory hurts for a moment, a fierce deep ache that has never quite faded. I use anger to push it away, focusing on what is real. Kale is dead. I saw his body; beautiful even in it’s stillness, at the funeral two years ago. Jacob, still breathing is as much dust as Kale. His soul scattered to the wind, leaving him a phantom. Not even a lost boy, but a broken discarded toy. The anger burns through my veins like acid, and the present once again comes into sharp focus.
At present a nervous, slender boy is standing in the center of my living room. His posture is defensive, and he’s got his fingers placed wrong. Again. My immediate instinct, to snap a cutting correction is killed when those cornflower blue eyes of his glance in my direction with a sort of desperate misery. Damn his eyes. I can’t yell at him, not looking like that, fragile and confused. Like an angel in need of directions. The thought brings a smirk, unintentional, to my lips. If an angel were in my living room, he’d certainly need directions.
Tarran winces and looks away quickly. Once again, I open my mouth to snap something. Instead, I count to ten. Twice. “Tarran?” There that was gentle enough wasn’t it? “You have to…” I try to think of a decent way to explain the chord to him. Nothing comes to mind. I was never meant to be a god damned teacher. A flicker of inspiration, I can fix this. I can just put his fingers on the right fucking strings.
Those blue eyes don’t leave me for a second as I walk over. Kale taught me to read people, and I’m better at it than I let on. I may not take people’s feelings into account, but I usually understand them. Fear and something like guilt war for dominance in Tarran’s gaze. Fear is easy to understand. He watches me like a demon might hide just beneath my skin. Maybe one does. Evret is my soul, a cold, violent monster with no care but for it’s own survival. He’s right to be afraid. I am dangerous.
The second emotion makes no sense to me. Maybe it’s not guilt, but something I don’t recognize. Either way, it annoys me, as does the fear. I want him to trust me, want him to like me. I just want him. A lithe, winsome boy with hair the color of passionflowers and the eyes of a lost angel. I find myself wondering what he tastes like. What does heaven taste like?
“It’s like this.” I begin. I’ve reached him now, reached behind him actually. He has to crane his neck to see me. Standing close I take the guitar in my own hands, my fingers overlapping his. It’s almost like holding him. Close enough that I spend a second lost, caught up in the warmth of his hands, the smell of his hair. He’s a good half a head shorter than I am, and I can feel the way his body would fit against mine if I were to close the small gap between us. Just maybe- but then I feel the goose bumps on his arms, and realize if he feels any emotion toward me it’s simple terror. Fuck him anyway.
Gritting my teeth to keep the sudden wave of anger under control, I carefully, precisely, resettle his fingers in the right places. It occurs to me that his hands are too small to play comfortably, but I dismiss the thought. If not to learn he has no reason to come here. And this strange, beautiful interruption in my stark apartment would be sorely missed. Anger recedes as quickly as it rose, leaving me in control. Calm enough to handle anything. Even teaching.
“There see? That’s the fingering for the chord.” I tell him, keeping my voice soft. Trying to sound encouraging. He doesn’t actually suck at this. He just needs to get over the fact that he seems almost as afraid of the guitar as he is of me. He just needs a better teacher. He runs the pic across the strings, and the sound is quiet, hesitantly cutting through the silence of the apartment. Slender shoulders slump further.
“I… I’m sorry. I’m not good…” He murmurs softly. Have I mentioned the sound of his voice? I’ve never heard anything like it before; it’s enthralling.
“Fuck that.” I reply immediately and regret it just as quickly. Tarran is a student at one of the private mage schools, and I come off sounding like what I am. What I am, nothing but an uncouth street kid, a fucking moron that dropped out in the seventh grade. Never mind that I live at the top of this tower of steel. TV’s right, you never get away from your roots. Son of that fucking alcoholic slut and I’ll never get away from that. Not really.
“Listen.” I say more carefully, “You’re just new at this, ok? To start, you have to actually touch the pic to the strings. It helps.” I tighten my grip on the hand that holds the pic and run it firmly over the strings. The resulting sound is purer, clearer than the last. “See?”
“Yeah, I think so.” He responds. It sounds like he might actually mean it. I’m pretty sure this is a good sign. It occurs to me that maybe, if he relaxes with the guitar, he’ll relax with me as well. Or at least he’ll get better at the guitar.
The phone rings, slaughtering the fragile calm growing between us. Tarran jumps, wincing away from me and looking startled. Snarling, I release him, as it rings a second time.
“Fuck!” I growl, simply cutting off the sound, not allowing it to enter the room with Tarran and I. “Just… one minute. You can sit down and practice or something.” I tell him quickly. “God damned fucking phone.” I continue to mutter as I walk out of the room. Anger is impossible to control and I feel the doorknob begin to dissolve under my fingertips. Focusing my power into something constructive, I direct the acid at my lamp. As the liquid corrodes the metal I start to calm. I never liked that lamp anyway.
“What is it?” I snarl into the phone. Happy? Not by a long shot.
“East? East? Man… I’m sorry. Don’t be mad at me… please East, I’m sorry.” The voice is Jacob’s, the confused redundant way of speaking he took on shortly after Kale’s death. After I left him, let him finish breaking.
“Fuck, Jacob, I’m not mad.” I tell him, lying. There is an angel in my living room and I am sitting here, talking to a shattered being from my past. Mad doesn’t even being to cover it. But I owe Jacob, even if I’m not sure what, or why. “What’s wrong?”
“I… I don’t know man. It’s just… just… man East, I don’t know.” As he stumbles through his words I wonder what drug is causing the new sort of slurring in his words. What new pill is grinding away what’s left of him, “I’m scared.” He tells me, and his voice shakes on the word. “East, please, I’m really fucking scared.”
“Jacob. What’s. Wrong.” I annunciate each word clearly, wondering if I’ll get a direct answer tonight. He calls about once a month, fucked up on drugs and usually asking for money. I always give it to him. I’ve got cash to spare.